It says a lot for the infusion of character in this Newcastle United squad that the club’s roll call of woe at Southampton now feel like ancient history rather than festering wounds that may be re-opened at St Mary’s on Sunday.

For those who may have forgotten, this weekend’s venue has been the one that has visited more ignominy on Newcastle United in recent seasons than most. Two 4-0 defeats under Alan Pardew – both laced with the sort of fecklessness that typified the later weeks of his time in charge of Newcastle – were followed by a 3-1 defeat that was the nadir of Rafa Benitez’s time at St James’ Park.

It was during that game that Benitez saw Newcastle concede a goal to Shane Long that he still talks about in hushed tones to this day. “I couldn’t believe the first two goals,” he said on Friday, head bowed to the floor.

A second followed and in the dressing room during the game, Jamaal Lascelles challenged Daryl Janmaat over his first half efforts to try and rouse a response from the listless right-back. It worked: Benitez had to usher the defender into the corridor of the dressing room where an injured Janmaat, the red mist having descended by this point, punched a door and broke his hand.

Newcastle United's Daryl Janmaat

The general air of farce was only added to by the fact that Janmaat, having released what he’d done in the aftermath, proceeded to faint and had to be revived by the club doctor. The two broken fingers sustained in that incident ruled him out games. If Benitez had not realised how rotten the dressing room he’d inherited was before the long trek south, he certainly did at that point.

It says much that Newcastle’s Sunday trip to St Mary’s should be without such peril. It is a difficult game – Mauricio Pellegrino has made a deceptively mediocre start at St Mary’s according to Benitez – but the chances of Newcastle withering as they have done in three previous visits are very small.

Consider this: since shipping three at St Mary’s Newcastle have only conceded three goals on five occasions since. That’s 7% of the 67 games that have followed. They conceded three or more in 20 of the 67 games before Benitez – that’s 30% of their matches. That is one incredible transformation.

Newcastle, once considered such a soft touch that Crystal Palace’s assistant manager John Solako said a pre-match team talk consisted of simply reminding the players that United wouldn’t cope if you put pressure on them, are now a resolute side rather than lambs to the slaughter.

Much of that comes from organisation. DeAndre Yedlin said that Newcastle’s training sessions could sometimes veer into boredom under Benitez but that the relentless nature of the work they did had the effect of “slowing down” the action on matchday.

Benitez’s specific sessions for his defenders consist of advice on movement, body shape and timing. “It’s a bit boring, but you don’t really realise when you’re doing it as well, but when you get into the game situations, it’s much easier and things get slowed down for you and you see situations that you’ve seen before in training, so things just become much easier,” he said.

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The Premier League is seeing a different side to Newcastle and even if the fiestiness hasn’t completely disappeared – Lascelles remains a vocal presence on the training ground to the extent that he provoked the usually cool Mo Diame into a confrontation last week – it now comes from a more positive place.

Newcastle fans will be hoping we’ll be able to say the same about St Mary’s after Sunday; what was once the graveyard of black and white repuations can be the launching pad for the next part of Newcastle’s season.

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“The stats, sometimes, mean nothing. You change the players, managers, environment, so everything is different. You can see we have a bad record, but everything is different. Hopefully the score will be different,” he said.

Benitez will assess his players today but he has a full squad to choose from. It’s likely that Mikel Merino – whose permanent move from Borussia Dortmund was confirmed for around £7million on Friday – will continue with Jonjo Shelvey. Joselu should spearhead the

Ciaran Clark returns from the World Cup qualifiers bouyed by the defeat of Wales. Benitez thinks he can continue to impress for Newcastle. “I was following him before when I was at Liverpool and we knew we were signing a player with experience in the Premier League and that he could do well. It was a big price but now watching him last year, he did really for us,” he said.

“He’s another one that can give us some experience, some good performances. In the end, that’s what we need. We have a young team, so we need some experience to balance things.”

Young - but rapidly improving. Winning at Southampton would be another little sign of progress.